The head of the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees has said “one child gets killed every hour” in Gaza by Israeli attacks, Al Jazeera reports.
“These are not numbers. These are lives cut short. Killing children cannot be justified,” Philippe Lazzarini said on X. “Those who survive are scarred physically and emotionally.”
Lazzarini warned that the clock was ticking for these children: “They are losing their lives, their futures and mostly their hope.”
Speaking to Al Jazeera, a British emergency physician who has worked on medical missions to Gaza said it is not possible to comply with an order to fully force out the hundreds of people inside the last partially functioning hospital in the area.
“There are about 90 to 100 patients still in the hospital, including babies in incubators. There are about 400 civilians and 150 healthcare workers. The surrounding area is incredibly dangerous. In the past 24 hours, there’s been continued bombardment and sniper fire into the hospital,” James Smith told Al Jazeera.
He added that it is also a breach of international humanitarian law to try to force those patients to move because hospitals are protected spaces.
The Israeli military has again warned Lebanese residents that they could be killed if they return to their homes in the southern parts of the country, Al Jazeera reports.
Avichay Adraee, the Arabic-language spokesman of the army, released a map naming 62 villages whose residents are prohibited from returning until further notice.
“Anyone who moves south of this line exposes himself to danger,” he said.
The Israeli military has again warned Lebanese residents that they could be killed if they return to their homes in the southern parts of the country, Al Jazeera reports.
Avichay Adraee, the Arabic-language spokesman of the army, released a map naming 62 villages whose residents are prohibited from returning until further notice.
“Anyone who moves south of this line exposes himself to danger,” he said.
An official from one of only two functioning hospitals in northern Gaza told AFP that Israeli forces were continuing to target his facility and urged the international community to intervene before “it is too late.”
Hossam Abu Safiyeh, director of Kamal Adwan hospital in the city of Beit Lahia, described the situation at the medical facility as “extremely dangerous and terrifying” owing to shelling by Israeli forces.
An Israeli military spokesman denied that the hospital was being targeted.
“I am unaware of any strikes on Kamal Adwan hospital,” he told AFP.
Safiyeh reported that the hospital, which is currently treating 91 patients, had been targeted by Israeli drones.
“This morning, drones dropped bombs in the hospital’s courtyards and on its roof,” said Safiyeh in a statement. “The shelling, which also destroyed nearby houses and buildings, did not stop throughout the night.”
The shelling and bombardment have caused extensive damage to the hospital, Safiyeh added.
The Government Media Office in Gaza has said the Israeli military stormed “the new camp” in Nuseirat with more than 17 military vehicles, dozens of soldiers and jets, Al Jazeera reports.
In a statement on Telegram, the office said the army killed and wounded more than 50 people — all civilians, including children and women — in the camp in central Gaza, while also demolishing more than 20 housing units.
“We condemn in the strongest terms the barbaric aggression committed by the ‘Israeli’ occupation army against the new camp area in Nuseirat,” it said, calling the military’s actions a “crime of genocide”.
It added: “We call on all the world to condemn these complex crimes committed by the occupation against our Palestinian people.”
Dr Hussam Abu Safia, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, says Israeli tanks and bulldozers yesterday abruptly approached the western gate of the besieged facility under heavy gunfire, Al Jazeera reports.
Bullets penetrated the intensive care unit, the maternity department, and the specialised surgery department, he said in a statement released today, adding patients had been evacuated to the hospital corridors, but some bullets hit inside the departments, creating fear and chaos.
“Additionally, one of the generators was targeted and completely put out of service due to a fire. There were also attempts to hit the fuel tank, but fortunately, it did not explode,” he said.
Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 45,317 Palestinians and wounded 107,713 since October 7, 2023, the Palestinian enclave’s health ministry said in a statement, Reuters reports.
The toll includes 58 people in the past 24 hours, the statement added.
Gaps between Israel and Hamas over a possible Gaza ceasefire have narrowed, according to Israeli and Palestinian officials’ remarks, though crucial differences have yet to be resolved, Reuters reports.
A Palestinian official familiar with the talks said while some sticking points had been resolved, the identity of some of the Palestinian prisoners to be released by Israel in return for hostages had yet to be agreed, along with the precise deployment of Israeli troops in Gaza.
His remarks corresponded with comments by the Israeli diaspora minister, Amichai Chikli, who said both issues were still being negotiated. Nonetheless, he said, the sides were far closer to reaching agreement than they have been for months.
“This ceasefire can last six months or it can last 10 years, it depends on the dynamics that will form on the ground,” Chikli told Israel’s Kan radio. Much hinged on what powers would be running and rehabilitating Gaza once fighting stopped, he said.
The detentions by Israeli forces have been carried out during raids since yesterday evening, according to the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, Al Jazeera reports.
The groups said the arrests were made in the occupied governorates of Bethlehem, Hebron, Nablus, Qalqilya, Ramallah and Tubas.
Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said the country needs a “big deal that does not include surrender to Hamas” in Gaza, according to Al Jazeera.
“I believe that surrender deals that harm the great war achievements, harm us,” the leader of the ultranationalist Religious Zionist Party told Israeli radio station 103fm.
“Releasing terrorists with blood-stained hands is actually rebuilding Hamas leadership,” he said, referring to Palestinian prisoners who could be released as part of a captive exchange deal.
Along with far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Smotrich has been one of the staunchest opponents of a Gaza ceasefire agreement.
Israeli Democrats Party leader Yair Golan has also agreed that “we should not accept a small deal” but said the state should not give up on retrieving all the captives held in Gaza.
“We should go for a deal where everyone is released and build an alternative to Hamas,” he was quoted as saying by Israeli Army Radio.
Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam policy lead in the occupied Palestinian territory, tells Al Jazeera that the situation in Gaza is “nothing short of an apocalyptic nightmare”.
Speaking about Israeli authorities allowing only 12 aid trucks into besieged northern Gaza in the past two and a half months, she said that the figure demonstrates how the resources going in are just a drop in the ocean.
“This is not aid, this is cruelty. And when those supplies do get in, they are followed by shelling and destruction of the very places people are sheltering,” she said from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
“People are now scared to go out and get the aid on the trucks because there’s been follow-ups of air strikes after trucks were delivered.”
Activists and local Palestinian platforms on social media have released footage, verified by Al Jazeera, showing Israeli forces detaining dozens of Palestinians in a stadium at Fawwar camp, south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank.
The scenes show dozens of Palestinians standing in the stadium surrounded by Israeli soldiers. According to local platforms, the Israeli forces turned the youth club of the camp into a field investigation centre.
The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said nearly 100 people were held at the stadium in what was the third raid on the camp within 24 hours, and that Israeli forces closed all entrances and exits of the camp and prohibited movement inside.
Israel has violated “all the rules of war” in the Gaza Strip, the commissioner-general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said, according to Anadolu.
“Escalation over the past 24 hours. More civilians are reported killed and injured,” Philippe Lazzarini said in a post on his X account.
“Attacks on schools and hospitals have been commonplace. The world must not become numb. All wars have rules. All of those rules have been broken.”
Lazzarini also emphasised that a ceasefire in Gaza is “long overdue,” calling for a halt to the attacks to protect civilians.
Hamas has condemned the Israeli military’s ongoing assault on the hospital in northern Gaza, describing it as an “unprecedented crime against humanity”, Al Jazeera reports.
“The occupation army continues its brutal bombing and systematic destruction of areas in the north of the Gaza Strip, especially Jabalia, its refugee camp and Beit Lahia,” it said in a statement yesterday.
It added that the strikes have been targeting shelters, schools and especially the Kamal Adwan Hospital.
Hamas also said that threats were made to evacuate patients, the injured and displaced people from the hospital, calling it “a crime of ethnic cleansing and forced displacement” amid international silence and inaction.
Former US State Department official Mike Casey, who served as a deputy political counsellor at the US Office of Palestinian Affairs, described his experience as a diplomat in Jerusalem as a humiliation.
“It’s frankly embarrassing … to see just the way we give in to the demands of the Israeli government and continue to support what the Israeli government is doing even though we know it’s wrong,” Casey told Al Jazeera.
“And I’ve not seen that in any other country that I’ve served in.”
Asked why US government policy is what it is, Casey said he believes part of the reason is that “there’s no concern for Palestinian suffering”.
After four years in his post, Casey resigned in July over what he described as the US government’s unwavering support for Israel despite its devastating military campaign in the Gaza Strip.
Israel has ordered the closure and evacuation of one of the last hospitals still partly functioning in a besieged area on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip, forcing medics to search for a way to bring hundreds of patients and staff to safety.
The head of the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahiya, Husam Abu Safiya, told Reuters via text message that obeying the order to shut down was “next to impossible” because there were not enough ambulances to get patients out.
“We currently have nearly 400 civilians inside the hospital, including babies in the neonatal unit, whose lives depend on oxygen and incubators. We cannot evacuate these patients safely without assistance, equipment, and time,” said Abu Safiya.
“We are sending this message under heavy bombardment and direct targeting of the fuel tanks, which if hit will cause a large explosion and mass casualties of the civilians inside,” he said.
The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment on Abu Safiya’s remarks. It claimed that on Friday it had sent fuel and food to the hospital and helped evacuate more than 100 patients and caregivers to other Gaza hospitals, some in coordination with the Red Cross, for their own safety.
Abu Safiya said the military had ordered patients and staff to be evacuated to another hospital where conditions are even worse. Photos from inside the hospital showed patients on beds crammed into corridors to keep them away from windows. Reuters could not immediately verify those images.
Mourners pray during the funeral of Palestinians killed in an Israeli strike, at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, in Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip on Dec 22, 2024. — Reuters
As an Israeli strike on Abu Samra family’s house in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah killed at least 13, an AFP photographer saw residents searching through the debris for survivors, while others looked for belongings they could salvage.
In a nearby compound, bodies covered in blankets lay on the sandy ground.
The Israeli military claimed it targeted an Islamic Jihad fighter who was operating in Deir el-Balah.
“We are… losing loved ones every day,” said Deir el-Balah resident
Naim al-Ramlawi.
“I pray to God that a truce will be reached soon” and would allow Gazans to finally “live a decent life, instead of this miserable life”, he said.
Separately, civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said an strike on a school building in Gaza City killed eight, including four children. AFP images showed mangled concrete slabs and iron beams strewn amid patches of blood at the damaged school building.
People search for survivors at the site of an Israeli strike that targeted the Abu Samra family home in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on Dec 22, 2024. — Reuters
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to retaliate against Yemen’s Houthi rebels after they fired a missile at Tel Aviv, warning that Israel would target what he described as the last remaining arm of “Iran’s axis of evil”, AFP reports.
The Houthis struck Israel’s commercial hub on Saturday with what they claimed was a ballistic missile, injuring 16 people and forcing many to leave their homes following the pre-dawn attack.
“As we acted with force against the terrorist arms of Iran’s axis of evil, so we will act against the Houthis… with force, determination and sophistication,” Netanyahu said in a video statement.
The latest Israeli strike against the Houthis was on Thursday, with Israeli warplanes striking Sanaa for the first time. The Israeli response came soon after the rebels fired a missile that damaged an Israeli school.
On Sunday, Netanyahu acknowledged Washington’s backing, saying that Israel was “not alone” in its fight against the Houthis. “The US, as well as other countries, see the Houthis as a threat not only to international shipping - but to the international order”, Netanyahu said in his video statement.
In a similar statement issued earlier this week, Netanyahu said, “After Hamas, Hezbollah and the (Bashar al-)Assad regime in Syria, the Houthis are almost the last arm of Iran’s axis of evil.”
Gaza’s civil defence agency has said that Israeli strikes killed at least 35 Palestinians across the territory yesterday. The violence came even as Palestinian groups involved in the fighting said a ceasefire deal was “closer than ever”.
On the ground in Gaza, civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said at least 13 people were killed in an air strike on a house in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah belonging to the Abu Samra family.
The military also confirmed a separate strike further north, on a school in Gaza City. Bassal said eight people including four children were killed in the attack on the school, which had been repurposed as a shelter for displaced Palestinians.
It was the latest of numerous similar strikes against schools-turned-shelters during the offensive.
Bassal said in a statement that a separate strike, overnight into Sunday, killed three people in Rafah, in the south. And a drone strike on Sunday morning hit a car in Gaza City, killing four people, the spokesman added.
Later on Sunday, the civil defence agency said seven people were killed when Israeli drones struck tents in the humanitarian area of Al-Mawasi in western Khan Younis, while the Israeli military claimed it had targeted a “Hamas terrorist”.
Just 12 trucks distributed food and water in northern Gaza in two-and-a-half months, aid group Oxfam has said, raising the alarm over the worsening humanitarian situation in the besieged territory, AFP reports.
“Of the meagre 34 trucks of food and water given permission to enter the North Gaza Governorate over the last 2.5 months, deliberate delays and systematic obstructions by the Israeli military meant that just twelve managed to distribute aid to starving Palestinian civilians,” Oxfam said in a statement, in a count that included deliveries through Saturday.
“For three of these, once the food and water had been delivered to the school where people were sheltering, it was then cleared and shelled within hours,” Oxfam added.
Oxfam said that it and other international aid groups have been “continually prevented from delivering life-saving aid” in northern Gaza since October 6 this year, when Israel intensified its bombardment of the territory. “Thousands of people are estimated to still be cut off, but with humanitarian access blocked it’s impossible to know exact numbers,” Oxfam said.
“At the beginning of December, humanitarian organisations operating in Gaza were receiving calls from vulnerable people trapped in homes and shelters that had completely run out of food and water.”
Oxfam highlighted one instance of an aid delivery in November being disrupted by Israeli authorities. “A convoy of 11 trucks last month was initially held up at the holding point by the Israeli military at Jabalia, where some food was taken by starving civilians,” it said.
Two men sit with cups of hot beverages at sunset atop a concrete water storage tank overlooking the Hamad Residential City complex in the north of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on Dec 22, 2024. — AFP
The Gaza Government Media Office has urged the World Health Organisation to urgently deploy a delegation to protect Kamal Adwan Hospital and its staff, patients and displaced Palestinians from Israeli attacks, Al Jazeera reports.
It said in a statement that bombing and threatening hospitals is a humanitarian and moral crime as well as a flagrant violation of international laws and norms.
“These attacks are ongoing and have not stopped for nearly 80 days since the ground aggression on the northern Gaza Strip Governorate began, which has claimed the lives of thousands of martyrs, left many missing, wounded or detained,” the statement said.
The office added that attacks on Kamal Adwan Hospital are part of Israel’s plan to systematically dismantle the healthcare system in the territory. It said it holds Israel, the US and other countries participating in the “genocide” like Germany, the UK and France responsible.
Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza is currently without power after Israeli drone attacks hit its generators and fuel tanks, Al Jazeera reports according to the Anadolu news agency.
Marwan al-Hams, the director of field hospitals in Gaza’s Health Ministry, told Anadolu that the situation at the hospital was “dire”, saying communication between medical staff had been cut off.
The military says its forces completed an operation in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahiya, and have moved to the areas in the west of the Beit Hanoon neighbourhood, Al Jazeera reports.
A military statement said troops killed many fighters and destroyed their infrastructure above and below ground during the offensive in Beit Lahiya.
The operation around Beit Hanoon has been launched as a result of intelligence information suggesting fighter activity in the neighbourhood, the statement claimed. Fighter jets and artillery units struck the area before soldiers moved in, it added.
